BENGALURU: Engineers, technocrats, innovators, students and differently abled people shared a common platform, as part of Enable Makeathon 2.0, to discuss the use of technology to build a more inclusive society.
An initiative of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its partners, the Makeathon is an intensive innovation programme.
This year the focus was on crowd-sourcing prototype products and solutions to address the challenges regarding accessibility and employability of people with different disabilities – be It impairment of sight, hearing or locomotive.
This year 16 teams made the cut to the co-creation camp, out of which four are from Bengaluru.
Regarding the idea, Jeremy England, Head of Regional Delegation, ICRC, Delhi said, "We are working to assess the need of people with disability in remote and difficult areas, and once they are identified we pose that as a challenge to these teams to solve.”
He said that this year 98 teams participated from around the World and 16 from India have been shortlisted. “They would be going through an intense six-week workshop, where all kinds of help and solutions would be facilitated to them, be it financial, technical, logistics NGO support all of it. Their products will undergo further refinement, user and market testing and the final three winners would be awarded an incubator grant."
Enable Makeathon co-creation camps will take place in two simultaneous locations – in Bengaluru, hosted by the ICRC and in London, hosted by the Global Disability Innovation Hub and University College London.
